Little Black Girls and Little Black Boys

Today I watched two videos. One was of a young woman, aged about 15-years-old, giving oral sex to a young man on a city bus. There were individuals sitting next to her, in front of her, and behind her.

The second was of the same little girl performing the same act in an alley with a group of her "boyfriend's" (I am assuming he was at least her boyfriend) watching, laughing, and of course video taping.

There is no larger disservice pillaging and plundering today's youth than their lack of education. Understanding your self-worth, is education. Knowing a man is supposed to provide for a household is also education. Knowing that is a man's job to protect a woman is also education.

I am nearly at a loss for words here and my ability to creatively say this is stifled. Please, just mentor a child.

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London Bridges

In an iconic gospel song Donnie McClurkin sung we fall down but we get up.

Imagine a row of dominoes, each uniformed, waiting for the next to fall behind it. There goes an unforgiving grandmother, mother and daughter each lining up behind each other and falling for the same trick; a stubborn, hard to approach, father who teaches his sons, who teaches their sons who will teach theirs.

Dominoes is one of our most favorite past times. Even if you don’t know how to play the game we are all too familiar with the concept it teaches us. If one of us falls, we are all prone to fall too. But if one of us is strong enough to push back against gravity, imagine how many who came before us we can uplift and how many behind us we can prevent from falling.

Generational curses are often the excuse that many of us use for our troubles. Our claim is that we never had anyone to show us any better. But innovation is not a blind concept; it starts with the idea that maybe there is a better way.

What’s your better way?

Generational curses work both ways. Some of us come from settings where success is a traditional value and for some reason we’ve stepped out of that tradition.

Sometimes creating our own row for ourselves is a bold move. Imagine what’s it’s like at the Kennedy family picnic for Lisa who decided to become a hair dresser. But imagine who they go to when they need an emergency haircut.

While there are generational curses, I believe there are generational cures. There are people who will pioneer of the resurgence of their family by planting their tree in fertile ground commanding for it to grow.

Look around at the dominoes in front of you, and think of the ones you will place behind you. Are we falling or are we standing tall.

Yesterday's Tomorrow

There is what we lived and there is what we lived for.

I remember the day I finally felt alive. I was standing in the Women’s Library on the south side of London. I was wearing a blue shirt that said, “Would You Like to Smurf Around.”

The irony is Smurf is what my family calls me. That name always reminds me of my youth.

I had on running shoes, maybe I was prepping for a journey; maybe I was ending one. We walked through the library, I ran my hands across the aged books feeling bumps of different magnitudes along the way.

Then Lizzy gave out the kinds of scream you have when you have an epiphany. We all ran over to see what she had discovered.

In a glass case, that shielded the world from tainting what was my moment, there was a hand written magazine. Every oooed and aaahed. I was too far behind them to see what they were looking at and one second from the moment I’d feel like me.

Looking through the glass I read, I know it is nothing, but it is my nothing. It was hand written on a paper magazine.

It carried the feeling of a personal love not transcribed by some machine, but by my own penmanship that belongs to me and my nothing.

I’m pretty sure my heart stopped. My mind flashed back to papers I’d written in college that came back with failing grades and comments telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, my writing skills lacked polish and my words meant nothing.

I made a vow to myself to never stifle what I had to say because someone didn’t agree. I left feeling rejuvenated, calm, free…me.

When I ended my summer in London, I went to work at a magazine and lived with my grandmother. When I came in the house my Grandmother came out, “Smurfet is that you?” “No, it’s Shirley,” I responded.

I have yet to write my own magazine, book or have my words heralded as legendary. But that’s what I’m living for.

Always and Forever

When most utter for richer or poorer the hope is that they never have to experience it. Imagine feeling the sting of infidelity, unemployment, autistic children, locked up boys who fell short of expectations and hearing, I want a divorce, there in your white dress.

At the altar you’re flying with the clouds, 10 years into the marriage, the world has crashed down on you. But those words are replayed back to you…for better or for worse.

I have seen true love.

When drug addictions, extreme poverty, homelessness, and 9 kids, my parents lost came along, no one packed their bags, they remembered a vow they never made—to have and to hold forever.

My parents never got married, but they stayed true to each other. Three days old, my father who lived in the neighborhood, looked in her crib and said my mother was the most beautiful baby he’d ever seen and that he’d marry her one day.

My Granddad tried to chase him away and he’s spent the last 36 years they’ve been together still trying. But their love is unbreakable. If you ask my mother to sing you a song, in her strong alto voice, the only song that comes from her heart, she’ll sing, “inseparable…yes baby…that’s what we are.”

When my mother turned 18 my father bought her a red corvette. They had it all. They had 4 houses, all the cars you could imagine and took trips all around the country. Money was not an object. When they battled a drug addiction, the money was gone, but love still persist.

I asked my parents why they never got married and my father said, “Because it would hurt me too much if my wife ever left me.” My mother started laughing like I’d never heard her laugh.

“One time I told your Dad that I was leaving and he looked at me and said, where we going. I knew that day I was stuck with him for life.”

This conversation we had on the porch of an abandoned house they were squatting. They have taught me everything I needed to know about love, life and loyalty. So while my parents did not raise me and have made some decisions that have negatively impacted me I am eternally grateful for the lesson their love taught me.

We ride together, we love together. I'm your's for life.